Baldwin, PA, was
a small backward town situated in
the neighbourhood of the Susquehanna
River some three miles south of
Harrisburg, when shortly after the
Civil War the Pennsylvania Steel
Company chose it as the site of the
first American steel plant in 1866.
It was an ideal location with both
the Pennsylvania Canal and
Pennsylvania Railroad running
parallel to the river nearby and in
close proximity to the ore and coal
fields in nearby Cornwall. The
small rural hamlet was transformed
and eventually lost its identity and
character with the

construction
of the large steel plant complex
on the flatlands adjoining the
river. It was inevitable that
the company officials and their
labour force would dominate the
life of the community so that it
became known as “Steel Works”
until 1880 when its name
officially became Steelton.

Before 1890
Steelton was a homogenous
community of some 10,000
inhabitants made up of mostly of white
Anglo Saxons Protestants with a smattering of
Germans, both those native to Pennsylvania and
recent immigrants many of whom were skilled
workers in the steel industry. The original
unskilled workforce that was later brought in
were primarily Irish immigrants and blacks
moving in from the rural South living in row
houses built and owned by the steel works and
served by the company store where they spent the
greater part of their income.

Steel Mill Life For The New
Immigrants

A strike in 1891 by the
skilled workers challenged the power of the
Pennsylvania Steelcompany but was
quickly put down. In the aftermath of the
strike the company encouraged massive
immigration from southern and eastern Europe
including the Austro-Hungarian Empire and did so
through recruiting agents. These men were often
local freelance operators living among their own
people and who were also working for the
steamship companies receiving their fees from
both on the basis of the numbers of immigrants
they enlisted. The arrival of thousands of
these Croats, Serbs, Italians, Bulgarians,
Slovaks, Hungarians and the so-called Banaters
(as the first arriving Danube Swabians were
known locally) forever changed the character and
composition of the population of Steelton. [Complete
Story]

The Attraction to
Steelton

What attracted the immigrants
to Steelton was the “high wages” the steel
industry paid. An unskilled worker was
paid up to twelve cents an hour. He could
work for twelve hours a day and earn $1.44!
An added incentive when it came to families was
a large cigar factory that also employed 800
women at seven cents an hour! Agricultural work
back home could never match that. The
worker’s own expenses seemed minimal in
comparison. The single and married men
living in boarding houses paid $2.50 a month for
their room that they usually shared with up to
four other men. Their meals were extra.
They could provide their own or eat with the
family. Most chose the latter option.
[Complete
Story]

In many ways, the majority of
the Danube Swabians who arrived in Steelton as
their destination on coming to the United States
were simply passing through and left few traces
behind of their sojourn there, except for the
descendents of those who remained, many of whom
in the future would have no knowledge or
recollection of their Danube Swabian heritage
beyond knowing their families were of German
origin.
[Complete
Story]